My eldest lemurling, who is seven, has been asking a lot of difficult questions lately. "Aren't we in a war?" "Two? Why don't people talk about it more?" "Why are we in them?" "Are we going to win?" And so on and so forth.
I found myself in the strange position of trying to explain the concept of insurgency and counter-insurgency to my little son at bathtime. "Unexpected" doesn't begin to cover it.
I worry at these moments. If I explain the situation with anything less than total clarity, he's going to repeat some garbled version of what I just said, which fills me with dread. But getting a little kid to understand, really understand some of these concepts and realities stretches my ability to explain to the breaking point.
Here's a rough transcript of my (futile?) attempt to explain insurgency:
So help a lemur out here. If you have kids, have you tried to explain concepts like this to them? How did you go about doing it? If you're still a young'un, do you have any memories of how your mammy or pappy approached this stuff? I'd like to hear some real examples, if at all possible.
And lastly, am i on a fool's errand, trying to explain this sort of thing to a first-grader? He really wants to know, but should I put him off for a bit, let him grow up a little before I try to explain these things?
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